Tuesday, July 04, 2006

Mangrove stomping

spent all day today squelching around the mangrove swap on the south west edge of darwin in search of some of the mangrove specialist birds. My main target was Chestnut Rail, a ver rare and elusive bird. I could hear the birds calling the other side of a channel that was far too deep and wide to negotiate which was incredibly frustrating. I waited for ages for to see if the yshowed along the far edge of the channel but with no luck, it only resulted in me getting slowly covered in mud, eaten alive by sandflies and constantly shitting it that a croc was about to launch itself aout of the channel, great fun!! The lack of the rails was slighlty compensated for by having good views of other mangrove birds including the stunning red headed myzomela. Other good sightings included, white breated whistler, Mangrove robin, rufous banded honeyeater and large billed warbler.
Early tommorrow morning i'm off to the mary river park, o nthe edge of kakadu national park, the setting of the film crocodile dundee, then a few more days further into the park. may not be updatig this for a while.

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